Lucy Connolly to be released from prison today after sentencing for inciting racial hatred

Lucy Connolly, jailed for inciting racial hatred against asylum seekers online, has been released from prison.

The 42-year-old, wife of Conservative councillor Raymond Connolly, was freed from HMP Peterborough after serving part of a 31-month sentence handed down in October for her online activity on the day of the Southport murders.

On 29th July last year, she posted on X: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the bastards for all I care … if that makes me racist so be it.”

She pleaded guilty to inciting racial hatred by publishing and distributing “threatening or abusive” written material on X and was jailed at Birmingham Crown Court in October 2024. The former childminder, from Northampton, was ordered to serve 40% of her sentence in prison before being released on licence.

Connolly’s case has sparked debate, with some criticising her sentence as excessive. A bid to challenge her sentence at the Court of Appeal was dismissed in May, which her husband described as “shocking and unfair.” The Northampton town councillor, and former West Northamptonshire district councillor, said his wife had “paid a very high price for making a mistake.”

But Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer defended the outcome earlier this year. Asked in May whether her imprisonment was an “efficient or fair use” of prison, Sir Keir said: “Sentencing is a matter for our courts and I celebrate the fact that we have independent courts in this country.

“I am strongly in favour of free speech, we’ve had free speech in this country for a very long time and we protect it fiercely. But I am equally against incitement to violence against other people. I will always support the action taken by our police and courts to keep our streets and people safe.”

Connolly was arrested on 6th August, by which point she had deleted her social media account, but further racist remarks were uncovered by officers who seized her phone. Her original post was viewed 310,000 times in three and a half hours before being deleted.

Lord Young of Acton, founder and director of the Free Speech Union, said: “The fact that Lucy Connolly has spent more than a year in prison for a single tweet that she quickly deleted and apologised for is a national scandal, particularly when Labour MPs, councillors and anti-racism campaigners who’ve said and done much worse have avoided jail. The same latitude they enjoyed should have been granted to Lucy.”

Legal experts note that Connolly’s case highlights the growing tension between freedom of expression and laws against incitement, an issue that has become increasingly prominent with the rise of social media. While the UK has long protected robust debate, prosecutions under the Public Order Act demonstrate the courts’ willingness to intervene when language is judged to cross into incitement, particularly when it reaches a wide audience online.

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[Image Credit | The Telegraph]

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